Special Episode: Vice Mayor Lacuna-Pangan

This special episode of the podcast features Vice Mayor of Manila, Mariah Sheilah Lacuna-Pangan. As a government official, she has first-hand experience and knowledge of the government's operations and plans of actions with the pandemic. Through her answers to the interview questions, she shares the challenges met with implementing ECQ and her assessment of the President's actions.

More specifically, the Vice Mayor shares the government's plan called CoDe COVID-19 Manila, which stands for "Contain" and "Delay". She expresses her support for the President's choice of actions, which may be questionable judgments to the rest of the public.

"We Filipinos are known with our resilience. We have survived many tragedies, calamities, and disasters. I believe that we will also be victorious in fighting the pandemic so long as we will be one and united... The COVID-19 shall come to pass, and we must learn from this experience." - Vice Mayor Lacuna-Pangan

While the other college students compared the public health responses between the Philippines with other countries, Lacuna-Pangan introduces the alternate argument that it is unfair to compare these countries since the Philippines is evidently at a lesser advantage financially and technologically. Moreover, the difference in cultures and social norms definitely make it a challenge to objectively assess the different responses between countries to the pandemic.